


the time that passes can be hard sometimes

by jannar



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Asami-centric, F/F, Near Future, Post-Finale, Post-Turtleduck, Relationship Growth, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 09:51:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3524762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jannar/pseuds/jannar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every relationship has a honeymoon period; it means something when you can make it work afterwards.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the time that passes can be hard sometimes

**Author's Note:**

> An apology.

The spirits themselves bent a new world into shape for Korra and Asami.

 

That flighty, blissful period of constant buzzing hearts and constant buzzing parts that comes with any new relationship lasted for the better part of two years. They learned each other so delicately with little sighs and long conversations, a caress along the side of the cheek here, a reassurance there whispered into each other’s mouth or fingertips or chest. The butterflies took off from their stomachs with every touch against deliberate hearts or deliberate parts and one butterfly grew into two grew into an entire army somewhere on the northwest corner of the map, where the creatures liked most to convene.

 

The time passed with ease but never lasted long enough, the two trying to stretch the moments out forever like rubber bands until those bands snapped and time sped back up again. They made love loudly and unapologetically -- unless, of course, they were on Air Temple Island or in some other public space, in which case their stolen labored breaths lived only in each other’s ears or so they hoped, but neither plaster dormitories nor airship bedrooms were terribly soundproof. In fact, they were certain that moans and thumps must have made it to Mako at some point, Asami thought out loud one evening with a daring arched eyebrow and a shared laugh before sweeping Korra off her powerful feet once more and kissing her against one of those light walls until the whole room warmed as though with firebending. The world was heavy and old and broken, the streets caved upon themselves and the buildings leveled, but they were building it again as they were rebuilding themselves from their rubble.

 

But the moments were thin and stretched for a reason, and they could care not whether Mako was blushing furiously down the hall over his ex-girlfriends when each moment urgently, hastily needed to be snatched to blossom. Korra needed Asami needed Korra, but Korra was often needed in other parts of the world than in Republic City. She would travel with Naga, or on a borrowed sky bison, or on rare occasions on a Future Industries airship with Asami by her side. And Asami, for her part, though they both longed for the warmth of each other’s soft jigsaw curves on long nights apart, had frequent need to be absent herself, working at her office late into the night or in her home office deep into the morning ( _but how much would I rather be working in my bedroom late in the night,_ she thought ruefully one familiar 2 AM, glancing in the direction of her bedroom where a sleeping Korra lay rumbling). When a CEO of a company doing much good and a world leader work in concert, it can mean many beautiful things for the harmony of the people who their union touches, and that union comes at no small cost to either party.

 

But while the heart does grow fonder when it is separate, the heartstrings also start to tense and grow weary and tremble. In time, Korra and Asami started to tire of the constant pressure of worlds unseen, of needs unmet and demands unceasing. Their interactions, when they got the chance for six hours or two weeks together, became muddled and confused by the pressures they were under, by different perceptions of “free time” but also of each other. For one, perhaps, it would be to go on a date and enjoy the evening; for the other, it may have been to work separately in mutual company. One wanted to Sleep Together while the other wanted to sleep together.

 

Time is not free, not truly free, when it is bookended by different needs and pressures and the space in between is limited – but, then, is not all time bookended by some need or desire, and should we not capture the in-betweens for all they are worth?

 

The fighting would start from an anxiety. _I’ve missed you a lot, and I’d just like to be able to take one night off together_ , Korra would say as Asami angrily looked up from a blueprint with newly acquired glasses sitting on the bridge of her nose. _I support you when you’re off saving the world, I don’t want to have a million things to do but I’m running the company that puts the whole city back together,_ Asami would bite back. They grew to miss the longing ache of hundreds of miles when the time they got together was less comfortable than being separate and wishing for the best parts of each other, the parts that may have almost been imaginary.

 

The fighting wears them thin and it eventually feels like they haven’t spent quality time together at all.

 

It’s been a few years now, and another urgency has Korra leaving Asami’s bedside in hours tinged with the purples and blues of the rising sun (or perhaps the bruises of hearts which love and ache) and Asami watches from the doorstep with her stomach in knots as the strong woman she’s grown to love and quarrel with flies her glider up and away once more. _But we didn’t fight much this time_ , she thinks. _This is the first time in a long time where we could just relax, mostly._

(A blush warms her cheeks at the thought of Korra, loveable dopey Korra, spraying water at her from her mouth in the shower and the resulting playful screech that had probably worried the servants. It was the little things.)

 

The stars begin to fade and the sun begins to rise as she stands there, staring distantly down the foothills towards the city that Korra’s old mind conceived and Asami’s new mind repaired as the street lamps nearest the Sato Estate start to go out, the world less fire and more water with each one. Her mind, whirling over the gears her hands are so familiar with, is lost somewhere else as the moon sinks. _We haven’t longed for each other in...a while. Arguing over how to spend our time is like a routine now._

 

Asami doesn’t like routine. To a degree, it’s helpful – knowing where people will be when, having a schedule that she can break if she pleases because she is, after all, the mastermind of the most powerful company in the United Republic – but it always leaves her itching for something more. Aside from all of the other reasons, that was part of why she had joined Team Avatar in the first place. She was tired of being part of the Sato empire without any sort of change or thought, no matter how she loved Future Industries. But then, she had also been eighteen. That had been seven years ago now.

 

She wraps her arms more tightly around herself as a burst of wind from the side rather than from Korra somewhere above jostles her from her thoughts. _But that’s now how it should be. We always regret wasting that short time we do get together._ She wonders dimly if it’s jealousy, or if it’s hurt, or whatever it is. Korra’s going to be away for at least a couple of weeks this time, on some trip to the Fire Nation that she hadn't caught the meaning of during a rushed explanation some hours before, and her heart turns over in her chest. _Why do we keep doing this?_ She supposed the sun had a routine, as she watched it move up the sky in the same way it had done uncountably many times before, but then, she wasn’t the sun. It’s agony to fall into something wrong and want so desperately to climb back out again, to see the edge but your fingers are too far to grasp it.

Asami wants that ache back. Asami wants to feel the way they did at the beginning, wants to recapture the mischief and the falling like stones into a lake.

 

_We were strong then, but we’re stronger now._

 

It was true. Even a year or so of rough patches couldn’t hold them apart, and realistically, logically, no relationship is perfect forever, is it? But she can try harder. Asami can’t help but wondering if it’s her own jealous streak that brings them down sometimes; Korra is stubborn, but caring, and Asami sometimes takes that for granted. For the first time in a long while, she finds herself missing that stubbornness that so challenges her own.

 

 

//

 

 

Three weeks pass by and all of the letters Asami has written but not sent lay by her bedside, a pile of words in a neat, curved handwriting. She’s done this once before, but this time she knows when Korra is coming back; this time she knows Korra is hers, knows that she is lucky enough to share a bed when the last time she would have jumped at an excuse to merely hold the girl’s hand, _did_ jump at the excuse to watch her meditating body.

 

 _I miss you_ , she’s written tens of times over. _I can’t wait to see you again._

 

 _I miss you_ , she’s written tens of times over. _I’ll take off a whole weekend to spend with you._

_I miss you_ , she’s written tens of times over. _Maybe we can have another date night in the turtle ducks. I promise I won’t make it speed around the pond this time. (Or maybe I will.)_

 

But this time Korra reads them upon her return, and as the shorter girl sweeps her into a deep kiss, wrap her heart in her arms while the unsent letters fall to the floor, Asami finds herself amazed like she hasn’t been since the very beginning that this powerful, strong, spiritual figure whose presence is so real and who has bent herself around the entire world still has to stand on her tip-toes to meet Asami’s lips. It feels right again. The spirits might find themselves creating once more.

**Author's Note:**

> If you can suggest a better title, I'm willing to hear it, because the title was actually the summary I had typed. Oops.


End file.
